BEFORE THERE WAS the digital sludge of conjured bullshit roaring through the internet, there was a kind of brick and mortal bullshit ensconced in the pubs and taverns of the world. Like the internet, these watering holes routinely peddled outlandish theories, often to people who, as they got comfortably tight, were just as likely to accept without question outrageous explanations from some drunkie as they were from an anonymous “internet expert.”  Everything from secret political motives, microchipped vaccinations, high crimes and misdemeanors, news of the weird, financial schemes and whatever else were explained with virtuosic bravura. We audience could only nod our heads in baffled agreement. 

It was at one such establishment that a friend of mine told of an interesting anecdote from the other side of the world. 

To wit: 

The Italian government, in an effort to give law enforcement an advantage over fleeing criminals, had actually invested in a fleet of Lamborghini cop cars. The reasoning was that these super fast roadsters could not be outrun. City officials reckoned that felonious escape would soon be reduced to zero. On the surface it seemed like a fine idea. That is, until the criminals figured out that while they couldn’t outrun the police, they could outlast them. Since the Lamborghini burns through fuel like a NASA rocket and will come apart like wet toilet tissue if it tries to ram anything off the road, all a carload of thieves had to do was keep driving until the cops, pursuing from a safe distance, eventually ran out of gas. Then as the official sports cars conked out, one by one, drifting to the side of the road, the criminals would escape to the safety of their hideouts to unload their stolen goods, kick their heels up, open a bottle of Fernet Branca, and toast to law enforcement’s rather limited foresight. Some of the more brazen getaway cars would even turn around and do a celebratory lap past all the stalled Lamborghinis littering the side of the road as the cops watched helplessly, shaking their fists at the perpetrators. Perched on the hoods of their fine Italian automobiles, the police could do nothing more than sulk and sip on the bottles of Fernet Branca that came standard in all Italian police cars and await backup and, more importantly, a can of gas. That’s the beauty of Fernet, though. Perfect for both criminal celebration and embarrassing defeat. 

Fernet: Delizioso Per Tutte Le Occasioni 

I never bothered to check the veracity of the Lamborghini story. I’d simply decided that I wouldn’t be surprised if it were true and left it at that. I tend to accept stories showcasing humanity’s failure to anticipate certain consequences, and likewise I usually reject conspiratorial narratives in which a handful of diabolical geniuses can perfectly concoct a scheme that has every unforeseen consequence accounted for with oracular precision. If the Ponte Morandi bridge could turn to rubble one day because some civil engineer forgot to carry the one, then it’s entirely reasonable to accept a fleet of police Lamborghinis that get five miles to the gallon and bankrupt the Roman economy with the maintenance costs. 

Must be why I’m a bad candidate for conspiracy theories like Q-anon and Pizza-gate and such. These folks give way too much credit to the governmental confederacy of dunces. In this world one needn’t be smart, just smarter than stupid, a relatively low bar that a surprising amount of citizens still trip over. There are flaws in every scheme and the bigger the scheme the bigger the flaws. Don’t listen to me, though. Here are some words from history’s sharpest literary minds. 

“Nothing succeeds as planned” —Joseph Heller

“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”—John Lennon 

“The best laid plans of mice and men oft go awry” —Robert Burns

“Nothing bears out in practice what it promises incipiently” —Thomas Hardy 

“It was surprised as hell to have happened” —bastardized quote from Marcus Aurelius 

I also found some other quotes that were a bit shocking.  

“Fuckin kaboom!” —The Hindenburg 

“Warble, warble, warble, smash” — Tacoma Narrows Bridge 

“Vroom, splutter, crash, [crickets],” — 1961 B-52 crash that accidentally dropped two undetonated atomic bombs in Goldsboro, North Carolina. 

“ZZZZZZZZZ,” a sleeping Captain Joseph Hazelwood, overseer of the Exxon-Valdez oil tanker spill. 

The list goes on and on. The reason evil geniuses are so hard to pin down is because, for the most part, they don’t exist. Sure, some people will be able to pull off a con for a while, like the Enron fellas and Madoff, the Prince of Ponzi. But that is due more to general gullibility than their own atomic brilliance. They aren’t smart, they’re just smarter than stupid. 

While I don’t pay much attention to the internet, I do still sit in bars and listen to all manner of opinion, wrapped in protective virus gear and drinking therapeutic Fernet Branca to avoid the masterful laboratory manufactured COVID-19, ingeniously planted in a wet market in Wuhan, China and traced by sadistic reverse-epidemiologists through the world with God-like precision to topple elderly western potentates. How diabolically brilliant of them to infect their own country first, giving the world a heads-up that went largely ignored. 

That’s dumber than stupid. 

Now, if I were a brilliant germ-peddler, I wouldn’t have wasted my time in Podunk, China. I would’ve dropped my superbug in Times Square, San Francisco’s Castro, West Hollywood, Michigan Avenue, Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, and a few other choice Occidental crossings. Of course I would’ve been smart enough to develop a preemptive inoculation for my own followers, so there would be no need to close any borders, thus ensuring my robust economy coasted on, unaffected, and the health, prosperity and happiness of my loyal populace continued unabated. 

Luckily it’s not possible to be that smart and that stupid at the same time. 

More Alembics….